Wall Street ends losing streak but Apple drags

By Marley Jay

11 September 2018 — 6:50am

US stocks broke a four-day losing streak Monday as industrial companies and retailers rose. Technology companies recovered some of their steep losses from last week.

Transportation and other industrial companies continued their recent rally and retailers like Nike, Home Depot and Walmart all climbed. While technology companies rose overall, Apple fell after saying a new round of bigger US tariffs could push it to raise prices.

Wall Street ended its losing streak on Monday.

Photo: Michael Nagle

CBS slipped after it announced the departure of longtime CEO Les Moonves, and Alibaba skidded after the big Chinese internet retailer said co-founder Jack Ma will step down as chairman in 2019.

The European Union's chief negotiator said the bloc might be able to reach a deal with Britain by early November. The British pound jumped.

Investors expect the US to put new tariffs on Chinese imports soon. The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong fell again Monday after President Donald Trump again threatened to tax almost everything the US imports from China. The index has tumbled almost 20 per cent since late January as the dispute has escalated.

Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab, said investors feel China has much more to lose in the conflict than the US does, as it exports much more to the US than it imports from it.

"If Chinese businesses and Chinese consumers get uncomfortable with this whole battle, they get nervous and they get tentative," he said. "When people do that, they stop spending."

S&P 500 index gained 5.45 points, or 0.2 per cent, to 2,877.13. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 59.47 points, or 0.2 per cent, to 25,857.07 as health insurer UnitedHealth and aerospace company Boeing traded lower.

The Nasdaq composite edged up 21.62 points, or 0.3 per cent, to 7,924.16. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks rose 4.29 points, or 0.3 per cent, to 1,717.47.

The S&P 500 fell 1 per cent last week, its worst drop since late June.

Nike rose 2.2 per cent to $US82.10. The stock slumped 3 per cent Aug. 31 as investors worried about potential backlash to an advertising campaign featuring former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Nike's stock has now regained almost all the ground it lost since then.

Technology companies moved higher as Microsoft picked up 1.1 per cent to $US109.38 and Broadcom rose 3.5 per cent to $US240.61. The S&P 500 technology index is coming off its largest weekly loss since March.

Apple fell 1.3 per cent to $US218.33 after it might raise prices on some of its products, including the Apple Watch and the Mac mini, in response to the tariffs.

The Trump administration could soon announce tariffs on $US200 billion in goods imported from China and has threatened more taxes after that. The administration has already imposed tariffs on $US50 billion in Chinese products, which Beijing matched.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng index tumbled 1.3 per cent. After peaking in late January, it's close to the entering what Wall Street calls a "bear market." The MSCI Emerging Markets stock index has already breached that mark as major indexes in Turkey and Russia have also skidded.

Frederick said the gap between rising US indexes and falling emerging markets indexes is unusual and can't last for very long: either the difficulties in emerging markets will start to affect the rest of the world economy, potentially slowing US growth, or emerging markets will start improving.

CBS announced Sunday that Moonves is stepping down after six more women accused him of sexual misconduct as well as retaliation if they resisted him. Moonves denied the charges in a pair of statements, although he said he had consensual relations with three of the women.

CBS fell 1.5 per cent to $US55.20, and it's fallen 4 per cent since the allegations against Moonves surfaced in late July.

Alibaba fell 3.7 per cent to $US156.36. The company's next chairman will be Daniel Zhang. Zhang replaced Ma as CEO in 2013.

France's CAC 40 added 0.3 per cent and the German DAX moved up 0.2 per cent. Britain's FTSE 100 was unchanged as the pound climbed to $US1.3029 from $US1.2924.

Benchmark US crude fell 0.3 per cent to $US67.54 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, used to price international oils, gained 0.7 per cent to $US77.37 a barrel in London.